Quotes About Pity

Socrates, the dialectical hero of the Platonic drama, reminds us of the kindred nature of the Euripidean hero who must defend his actions with arguments and counterarguments and in the process often risks the loss of our tragic pity; for who could mistake the optimistic element in the nature of the dialectic, which celebrates a triumph with every conclusion and can breathe only in cool clarity and consciousness.

Thus spoke the devil to me, once on a time: Even God has his hell: it is his love for man. And lately did I hear him say these words: God is dead: of his pity for man has God died.

One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one has given. One must have strong powers of imagination to be able to have pity. So closely is morality bound to the quality of the intellect.

Life itself appears to me as an instinct for growth, for survival, for the accumulation of forces, for power: whenever the will to power fails there is disaster. My contention is that all the highest values of humanity have been emptied of this will—that the values of décadence, of nihilism, now prevail under the holiest names. 7. Christianity is called the religion of pity.—Pity stands in

Pity thwarts the whole law of evolution, which is the law of natural selection. It preserves whatever is ripe for destruction;

There are heights of the soul from which even tragedy ceases to look tragic; and rolling together all the woe of the world -- who could dare to decide whether its sight would necessarily seduce us and compel us to feel pity and thus double this woe?

Ah, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the pitiful? And what in the world hath caused more suffering than the follies of the pitiful? Woe unto all loving ones who have not an elevation which is above their pity! Thus spake the devil unto me, once on a time: Even God hath his hell: it is his love for man. And lately, did I hear him say these words: God is dead: of his pity for man hath God died.

So long as the spectator has to figure out the meaning of this or that person, or the presuppositions of this or that conflict of inclinations and purposes, he cannot become completely absorbed in the activities and sufferings of the chief characters or feel breathless pity and fear.

Thus spoke the devil to me once: God too has his hell: it is his love of man....And most recently I heard him speak this word: God is dead: God died of his pity for man. —On the Pitying

Thus spoke the devil to me once: 'God too has his hell: it is his love of man.'...And most recently I heard him speak this word: 'God is dead: God died of his pity for man.

By and large, pity runs counter to the law of development, which is the law of selection. Pity preserves things that are ripe for decline, it defends things that have been disowned and condemned by life. […] In the middle of our unhealthy modernity, nothing is less healthy than Christian pity.

MEDIOCRITY AS A MASK. — Mediocrity is the happiest mask which the superior mind can wear, because it does not lead the great majority — that is, the mediocre — to think that there is any disguise. Yet the superior mind assumes the mask just for their sake — so as not to irritate them, nay, often from a feeling of pity and kindness.

A predominance of mandarins always means something is wrong; so do the advent of democracy, international courts in place of war, equal rights for women, the religion of pity, and whatever other symptoms of declining life there are.

Today we no longer have any pity for the concept of free will: we know only too well what it really is — the foulest of all theologians' artifices, aimed at making mankind responsible in their sense, that is, dependent upon them. Here I simply supply the psychology of all making responsible.

I want to teach them what is understood by so few today, least of all by those preachers of pity: to share not suffering but joy.

Aside from a few philosophers, men have always placed pity rather low in the hierarchy of moral feelings—and rightly so.

If I must have pity, then I do not want to be called such; and if I do have pity, then rather from a distance.

It is easy to romanticize poverty, to see poor people as inherently lacking agency and will. It is easy to strip them of human dignity, to reduce them to objects of pity. This has never been clearer than in the view of Africa from the American media, in which we are shown poverty and conflicts without any context.

Aging does not make women powerless objects of pity but colorful and entertaining individuals and, on occasion, fire-breathing dragons that wise people don't cross.

If people are cool, then they are not stressed. I pity the fool that don't be cool.

How much better a thing it is to be envied than to be pitied.

Those who do not complain are never pitied.

The whole horror of the much-praised capitalist order lies just in this: Without pity and devoid of all humanity it strides across the corpses of whole peoples to safeguard the brutal right of exploitation, and sacrifices the welfare of millions to the selfish interests of tiny minorities.

God is no respecter of either persons or names - Dieu or Gott or Kyrie or Adonai or Wakantanka. He is the Great Spirit whose pity we ask.